Path 2

Path 2

Firing Day at the NY Daily News Continues

September 23, 2010

We’ve heard about NYDN features editor Orla Healy’s ouster today, but there’s already been word of another firing at the Daily News, another big one:

William Goldschlag, Managing Editor for Politics, who was previously the deputy Washington Bureau chief of the Daily News. With his ouster we hear there’s a “similar wave of relief” as there was with Healy’s. We’re told Goldschlag “left quietly.”

The staff was supposed to have a 4 PM features meeting that got moved up to 2:45 today, and she “requested more people than usual attend, like the gossip department” which struck many as unusual. At the assembled gathering, Healy noted:

“This is going to be the shortest meeting ever — I just got fired.” We’re told the staff’s reaction was “absolute silence,” after which, Orla noted (and this is the quote from our source):

“Send everything [work-wise] to Amy [Diluna, fashion editor who’d become Orla’s Himmler by being her yes-girl.] She looked emotional and upset, but “kept it together” at that point.

Apparently, given the awesome level of leakage at the NYDN offices right now, her staff maybe felt stripes of the same way?

UPDATE: We’re told: “Many of the talented people Orla pushed out over the years are trading celebratory emails and planning parties.”

UPDATE 2: The outpouring of joy over Orla Healy’s firing is — after 14 months doing media gossip — kind of unprecedented. Here’s some more of what we got:

“A lot of folks are planning Orla parties, but the question is where to get so many munchkins to dance around 33rd street and sing Ding Dong. It’s not easy.”

“I will happily divulge the torturous fashion week nights where she made us drink white wine and smoke kools (literally made it mandatory) in her office while she cried about her life until 2 am and then called everyone an asshole and a bad reporter the next day.”

“Orla Healy was genuinely the most evil human being I ever worked with though and was the reason I left newspapers. Her mindfuckery was amazing. It was like being in Heathers every day. ”